Running out the clock on Benghazi
By Wes Pruden
PrudenPolitics.com
There’s no mystery about why Hillary Clinton spends
so much time on airplanes to dreary places that
everybody else avoids like the plague (or the
stomach flu). The climate anywhere is better than in
the comfortable ineptitude of Foggy Bottom.
The
report of an independent panel inquiring into what
happened in Benghazi, and why, blames the State
Department bureaucracy, essentially for not having a
clue about what was going on in Libya. A panel of
diplomats would never say anything like that, but
the message written between the lines is plain and
clear.
The
panel blames intelligence officers – i.e., the CIA –
for relying too much on “specific warnings” of
imminent attacks, waiting for the details of the
enemy’s game plan, and ignoring what should have
been telegraphed from the seat of their pants.
Everyone in Libya knew that the militias were all
over the eastern part of the country, having already
shot up a British diplomat’s motorcade and set off a
bomb outside the American mission in Benghazi. The
evil-doers were looking for evil to do. The
Americans were the obvious targets.
A lot
of people at Foggy Bottom were apparently busy with
morning and afternoon siestas. The panel
specifically blames the State Department’s
Diplomatic Security Bureau and the Near Eastern
Affairs Bureau for failing to pay attention to what
was going on around them:
Systemic failures and leadership and management
deficiencies at senior levels with two bureaus
[resulting in security] that was inadequate for
Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the
attack that took place."
Well,
duh. Anyone reading the newspapers or watching
television, despite the mainstream media’s
determination not to go after the story, knew that
much. The panelists did not address the politics of
the disaster, or why President Obama and his
administration have worked so hard to avoid talking
about their bungling and ineptitude and subsequent
attempt to cover it all up with self-righteous
blather.
Forgotten in all this is the obscure and infamous
home-made video that nobody saw, mocking the prophet
Mohammed. Mr. Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Susan
Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, all got
on television as often as they could to blame the
video for the attack on the consulate in Benghazi.
You might have thought the video was about to ignite
World War III. Nobody in the administration wants to
talk about those lies and evasions now.
The
latest evasion is what happened to Mrs. Clinton’s
emphatic assertion, after the row raised by the many
skeptics willing to believe their own eyes and ears,
that “I take responsibility.” She did not explain
what she meant. But taking responsibility requires
more than just saying she takes responsibility.
Susan Rice was then chosen to walk the plank that
Hillary had so cleverly avoided. Having women
available to take the heat is a tempting prerogative
for this president. When Mitt Romney brought up
Benghazi in the familiar timid and ham-handed way in
the second presidential debate, Candy Crowley, the
moderator, ran the usual media interference for Mr.
Obama.
Mrs.
Clinton, who no doubt has answers to more questions
than anyone else -- since she is paid to run the
State Department -- then disappeared. She had more
important things to do in Lower Slobbovia. When she
returned to redeem a promise to testify before
Congress about how the Benghazi debacle happened,
she fell ill with the belly bug, no doubt acquired
in Lower Slobbovia, a common malady of diplomats
suddenly on the spot. Then she fell and got up with
a knot on her head. It’s not clear just when Hillary
fell, whether before or after the belly bug bit. (We
wish her a full and speedy recovery, by the way.
Belly bugs are no fun and taking a lick on the head
isn’t, either.)
She
says she can’t wait to reschedule an appearance in
January before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
But by then, with a little luck, we’ll be talking
about her successor, probably Sen. John Kerry, the
famous Vietnam war hero, Francophile and keen
windsurfer.
Delay
and obfuscation have marked the Obama
administration’s reaction to the Benghazi debacle
since the slain ambassador, Chris Stevens, first
begged for the help that never arrived. Four
Americans, including the ambassador, paid for the
timidity and ineptitude with their lives.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
The
president and his minions were desperate to run out
the clock in October, struggling to stumble across
the goal line. Now Hillary is desperate to stall,
even it means an occasional bump on the head, until
her successor takes over. The public may never get
the promised explanation. Until then, we’re entitled
to think the worst. We’ll probably be right.