AFTER SPENDING OVER $7 MILLION, NOTHING NEW ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED IN BENGHAZI

…The burning diplomatic facility in Benghazi

 

After two years, $7 million spent on a political stunt with zero results.

 

Well, the so called “fiscally responsible Republican party” has once again proven that they can waste money just like those horrible liberals. 

 

After spending the better part of two years and more than $7 million, a mainly Republican panel headed by Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) was under severe pressure to show that this investment of time and taxpayer money was not wasted.  For the 8^th time, the Republicans in Congress again just had to re-investigate the terrorists attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi in 2012. 

 

 

As expected, Committee Chairman Gowdy failed at this task.  This panel follows the 7 other investigations into the attacks, so there was not much left to know, but the Republicans had planned to highlight any new nuggets of information they could find.  (As their own House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said on Fox News: “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?  But we put together a Benghazi special committee. A select committee. What are her [Hillary’s] numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known that any of that had happened had we not fought to make that happen.”)

 

In other words, the Gowdy Committee investigation was all an expensive political stunt to go after their presumptive competition for president in November.

 

Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, who died in the attacks along with three other Americans, told then-Deputy Chief of Mission Gregory Hicks in July 2012 that Secretary Clinton wanted to visit Libya again, perhaps in October, according to Hicks’s testimony to the committee.

 

Though Clinton has fended off negative allegations several times before, their possible new information will uncomfortably bring her worst night as Secretary of State back to the fore of the current presidential campaign.

 

Republicans see the revelation that Clinton was planning a trip to visit Libya and that Stevens wanted to make the Benghazi mission permanent, they see that as evidence that she was trying to cement her legacy as a major proponent of the intervention to topple Moammar Gaddafi, but that she ignored several signs that the facility was unsafe.

 

“It remains unclear why a State Department presence in Benghazi was so important,” two Republican committee members, Jim Jordan (Ohio) and Mike Pompeo (Kan.), wrote in their own summary of the lengthy report. “No matter how important a presence was — to Secretary Clinton, to the State Department, to the United States — it should have become very clear that the risks of staying without more security outweighed any possible benefit.”

 

Clinton has said many times that she did not personally deny any requests for more security in Benghazi; those decisions were made by lower-level State Department personnel. Republicans on the Benghazi committee argue that given Clinton’s keen interest in Benghazi and her plans to visit Libya, she should have taken action to respond to the dangerous conditions there.

 

As it turns out, it was the Republicans in the House that had cut the security budgets for the foreign embassies and other US diplomatic facilities abroad.  This kept the Benghazi operation from adding more security coverage.  (The Republicans in congress conveniently forget that fact, when trying to go after the former Secretary of State for the killings in Benghazi.)

 

Jordan and Pompeo both pointed to a Aug. 17, 2012, memo from Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Beth Jones, sent to Clinton, which warned of deteriorating security conditions and overall “lawlessness” in eastern Libya, including a spike in bombings, abductions, assassinations and car-jackings.

 

When Clinton was asked about the Jones memo by the committee, she said: “There was no recommendation based on any of the assessments, not from our State Department experts, not from the Intelligence Community, that we should abandon either Benghazi or Tripoli.”

 

“Nothing in the Republican spin changes the underlying facts,” said Democratic committee member Adam Schiff (Calif.)  “Nothing has disturbed the conclusions of the bipartisan House Armed Services Committee investigation that no military assets could have gotten there in time.”

 

The Benghazi report tries to lay out a timeline of interactions among Clinton, President Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and CIA Director David Petraeus that the Republicans panel members say shows a lack of communication and coordination at the highest levels of government while the attacks were underway.  But still, nothing new was offered.

 

Donald Trump’s claim that Clinton was sleeping when the call about the attacks came through was totally false, and the committee confirms that fact in its investigation.  But the panel does report that the first attack began at 3:42 p.m. Eastern, and Clinton did not speak to President Obama until six hours later.

 

Congressman Schiff rejected another supposed revelation that Republicans on the committee will focused on. The Republican report purports to reveal that no military assets were sent toward Libya until the attacks had ended. Although Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had ordered the deployment of a Marine Fleet Anti-terrorism Security Team, those assets were sent to Tripoli, not to Benghazi, the report states.

 

During the tragic event, Secretary Clinton was engaged in near-constant calls and other interactions with a host of US and foreign officials.  This included several calls with national security adviser Susan Rice, the Libyan president, and officials on the ground, including Deputy Chief of Mission Gregory Hicks.  She was the only Cabinet official to participate in a secure video conference call in which representatives from various agencies discussed the response in the early evening.

 

“Senior officials have uniformly testified that they were doing everything possible to provide emergency assistance to those under the attack.  The most Republicans can do is try to critique the secretary’s actions on that day because they have nothing else left to go after,” said the Democratic committee member Schiff.

 

The Republican committee report seeks, but fails, to reaffirm their long-standing accusations that Clinton lied about there being protests in Benghazi.  Though the latest Benghazi committee did find some new details, it totally fails to unearth anything so damning as to change any minds about the events of that tragic night, or who is to blame for them.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016