Sunday, October 25, 2015

BENGHAZI BEWILDERMENT

I admit that I don't get it  From the recent Benghazi hearing, I have learned that the State Department did not use email to communicate sensitive material between Washington and its ambassadors.  They used cables, which I assume were encrypted, but not email.  Email was used for non sensitive material, to begin with, so Hillary was able to say, with confidence, that she did not email any document which had been classified at the time it was sent.  Nevertheless, Republicans excoriated her for having a private server which was not necessarily secure.  At the same time. according to what Trey Gowdy said on a TV interview, this date, it was shameful that while a private citizen, Sidney Blumenthal, had unfettered access to Hillary's email, Ambassador Stevens did not.  Of course, that Ambassador Stevens was required to send his communications by cable and not email, for security reasons, is hardly an excuse, for a crusading Republican Select Committee Chairman. 

The only other point that the committee seemed to make, in the 11 hour marathon grilling, was that somehow, Obama got some advantage, in the 2012 elections because, even though Benghazi was a terror attack and not a result of demonstrations against a movie, it was called the latter instead of the former, at first.  The committee pointed out that Hillary, in an email to another ambassador, within hours of the incident, called it an attack by  an al Quaeda-like group whereas other sources in the Administration were using CIA reports that it was part of a demonstration. 

The matter was brought up, by Mitt Romney, at the second Presidential debate on October 16th, 2012, before the elections were held.  Romney accused Obama of having waited 14 days before calling the Benghazi incident "an act of terror".  Obama pointed out that on September 12th, the day after the attack, he had called it an "act of terror" in a speech in the Rose Garden.  In addition, a day later, in Las Vegas, he also had referred to the incident in Benghazi as "an act of terror".  The American people had ample exposure to the fact that the attack in Benghazi was the work of terrorists before the November elections yet for almost three (3) years now Republicans persist in the delusion that Obama, somehow, tricked the public into believing that Benghazi was part of a demonstration, and therefore, somehow, stole the election.  Somehow, this somehow even outweighs, in importance, Bush/Cheney having lied us into a war in Iraq. 

2 comments:

  1. I agree with what you have said. What I don't understand is that the nation's media has access to the same information that we do, yet they fail to call Republicans out on these things. I want the media to broadcast the truth and to expose the lies ... mainstream media fails miserably to that extent.

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    Replies
    1. Mst be that famous "liberal bias" the Conservatives are always complaining about.

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