Hillary's irrelevant Benghazi testimony

[W.G.Ewald]

I was going to pin this to the Benghazi, Libya thread but thought it might deserve its own thread. I listened to Hillary's farcical testimony before Congress today.

Hillary's irrelevant Benghazi testimony, WMD intel and Matt Ryan - Atlanta Law & Politics | Examiner.com

Finally, concerning the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, we don't need testimony from Mrs. Clinton to know that:

Libyan embassy and consulate personnel had requested that the Secretary of State complaining of inadequate security due to threats from al Qaeda and other terrorists groups only weeks before the anniversary of 9/11;
Four terrorist attacks occurred in Benghazi during the 12 months before the 9/11/12 attacks there;
Security was inadequate on the day of the attacks that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans stationed there; and
Hillary blamed the attacks on an anti-Mohamed video days later.

Even more absurd was the news that Obama is giving Egypt 20 F-16s and 500 M1 Abrams tanks.:shocked:

 

[The Messiah]

ok scrap that

 

[asianobserve]

Already lashing out at the next American President?

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Already lashing out at the next American President?

 

[Phenom]

Any synopsis on what she said.

While the State department did botch up its handling on the aftermath of the attack, I don't think they could have done anything to prevent the attack itself, other than not setting up the consulate in Bengazi.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Any synopsis on what she said.

While the State department did botch up its handling on the aftermath of the attack, I don't think they could have done anything to prevent the attack itself, other than not setting up the consulate in Bengazi.

Whether or not DoS could have anticipated the attack, its response was inadequate. Military response was restrained for political reasons (Obama said Al Qaeda had been defeated). Then Obama, Clinton and Rice (US ambassador to UN) trumpeted that the attack grew out of protest to an anti-Islam video and apologized to the world that the US had freedom of speech.

There is the connection of weapons going from Libya to FSA in Syria which remains concealed by US government. No answer to the the question, "What was US ambassador doing in vulnerable site in Benghazi?"

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Any synopsis on what she said.

While the State department did botch up its handling on the aftermath of the attack, I don't think they could have done anything to prevent the attack itself, other than not setting up the consulate in Bengazi.

Questions and criticism follow Clinton testimony

Clinton erupted when Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., asked whether, in the days following the attack, the American public was "misled" by State Department and White House officials who falsely blamed the attack on spontaneous protests.

"With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans," she said, raising her voice and waving her arms. "Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night and decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?"

Johnson told USA TODAY: "How do you initiate a proper response if you don't know what transpired? ... How do you tell the truth to the American people if you don't know the facts?"

It makes a difference because she, Obama, and Rice lied repeatedly about the reason for the attack.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Already lashing out at the next American President?

There those who gloat about the prospect of further tormenting US conservatives by getting Clinton in the White House in 2016. I imagine you would be one of them.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

It's not going away.

The Benghazi Talking Points | The Weekly Standard

Even as the White House strove last week to move beyond questions about the Benghazi attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2012, fresh evidence emerged that senior Obama administration officials knowingly misled the country about what had happened in the days following the assaults. The Weekly Standard has obtained a timeline briefed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence detailing the heavy substantive revisions made to the CIA's talking points, just six weeks before the 2012 presidential election, and additional information about why the changes were made and by whom.

As intelligence officials pieced together the puzzle of events unfolding in Libya, they concluded even before the assaults had ended that al Qaeda-linked terrorists were involved. Senior administration officials, however, sought to obscure the emerging picture and downplay the significance of attacks that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. The frantic process that produced the changes to the talking points took place over a 24-hour period just one day before Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, made her now-famous appearances on the Sunday television talk shows. The discussions involved senior officials from the State Department, the National Security Council, the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the White House.

The exchange of emails is laid out in a 43-page report from the chairmen of five committees in the House of Representatives. Although the investigation was conducted by Republicans, leading some reporters and commentators to dismiss it, the report quotes directly from emails between top administration and intelligence officials, and it includes footnotes indicating the times the messages were sent. In some cases, the report did not provide the names of the senders, but The Weekly Standard has confirmed the identities of the authors of two critical emails—one indicating the main reason for the changes and the other announcing that the talking points would receive their final substantive rewrite at a meeting of top administration officials on Saturday, September 15.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Hillary Hasn't Heard the End of Benghazi « Commentary Magazine

Democrats arrived at the House Oversight Committee's hearing on the Benghazi terror attack determined to defend the reputation of the person that most believe will be their presidential candidate in 2016. Ranking member Elijah Cummings and his colleagues thundered at chair Darrel Issa and any other Republican who dared to raise questions about the way the State Department responded not only to the attack but also to questions about the aftermath, determined to cast the entire event as a partisan ambush. But the testimony of the three whistleblowers overshadowed their complaints about the necessity for the hearing or the spin being put on it by Republicans. While nothing said at the hearing was the "smoking gun" that some in the GOP suspect will eventually bring senior administration officials down because of the Libyan tragedy, enough questions were raised to keep the fires stoked on the issue for the foreseeable future.

Whether Democrats like it or not, Americans are going to be wondering about what senior diplomat Gregory Hicks told the committee about requests for military assistance on the night of the attack, the disconnect between the false story about the murders being a response to an anti-Islamic film and what he and others on the scene told Washington, and why he was told not to cooperate with the House committee. If Clinton thought she had put these issues to rest in January when she railed at senators inquiring about Benghazi asking, "What difference does it make?" who killed the Americans and why, the whistleblowers have ensured that Congress will keep pushing until they get the answers to these questions.

The dramatic nature of Hicks' testimony about the night of the attack changed what started out as a stormy proceeding as Cummings attacked Issa's statements and motives. Hicks's recollection of the phone going dead as Ambassador Chris Stevens told him the attack was under way made it clear that what he would say would rise above the political maelstrom. And when he spoke of his conversations with U.S. military personnel who were outraged that they weren't being ordered to go to the rescue of the beleaguered Americans, that opened a can of worms that the administration had hoped it had definitively closed.

Just as problematic was Hicks's telling of his shock when he heard U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice tell the country that U.S. intelligence had decided the attack was the result of film criticism run amuck. Given that he had already communicated to Washington the fact that the film wasn't a factor in Libya and that U.S. personnel in Libya knew the assault was the work of an Islamist group connected to al-Qaeda, this makes the growing controversy about the truth behind the official administration talking points that the White House altered to downplay any connection to terror even more worrisome. As Pete Wehner noted on Monday, the emails prove that the administration knowingly misled the country about the attack in a manner that makes it impossible to believe they weren't motivated by their desire to help President Obama win re-election.

Just as damning was Hicks's testimony about being told by the State Department not to cooperate with the House committee and Representative Jason Chaffetz as well as how his career seems to have come to a standstill as a result of his unwillingness to toe the party line about Benghazi. When combined with other testimony raising questions about what was not done to protect or help the Americans, it's clear that further grillings of senior officials will ensue and keep the issue alive. More than that, what we heard today will deepen the suspicion that Clinton or others very close to the top in the capital had a clear desire to lie about the attack and to make sure that no one in the know about what actually happened would speak out.

None of this may change the opinions of Democrats who have been determined to move on from Benghazi since the fateful night of 9/11/12. Nor will it deaden the enthusiasm they are feeling about the prospect of Hicks's former boss running for president in 2016. But today's testimony shows that the attack will be a wound that will continue to bleed in the weeks and months ahead. It may not sink Clinton, but anyone who thinks she's heard the last of this wasn't paying attention today.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Benghazi Hearing Take Away: YouTube Video Had Nothing To Do With It - Hit & Run : Reason.com

Three whistleblowers are testifying to the House Committee on Government Oversight today about last September's attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, during which the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans were killed. One of the witnesses is Gregory Hicks, who was the number two American in Libya last September and among the last to talk to Stevens. He's testified that the ambassador made no mention of a demonstration at the mission in Benghazi, only an attack, and that "[t]he YouTube video was a non-event in Libya," despite the Obama Administration's attempts to pin the violence in Libya to protests over a trailer for an anti-Muslim film that had been on YouTube for months.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Benghazi Hall of Shame - Reason.com

Yesterday's dramatic congressional testimony about the deadly Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on U.S. interests in Benghazi, Libya convincingly corroborated what was widely reported within days of the attack: that senior American officials on the ground knew immediately, despite the Obama administration's storyline to the contrary, that the assault did not arise out of a "spontaneous" demonstration outside the U.S. Consulate in protest of an obscure YouTube trailer of a homemade anti-Islam movie called Innocence of Muslims

Falsely assessing partial blame for the violence on a piece of artistic expression inflicted damage not just on the California resident who made it—Nakoula Basseley Nakoula is currently serving out a one-year sentence for parole violations committed in the process of producing Innocence—but also on the entire American culture of free speech. In the days and weeks after the attacks, academics and foreign policy thinkers fell over themselves dreaming up new ways to either disproportionately punish Nakoula or scale back the very notion of constitutionally protected expression..

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Articles: Benghazi Coverup Uncovered

BBC has apologized for its coverage of the Benghazi murders; ABC has unraveled the mendacious tale of the talking points ' genesis and the Congressional hearings this week have dramatically established the administration's elaborate lies about how our ambassador and his brave defenders were murdered and its failure to protect them. Maybe now the press will feel it's okay to get off their duffs and report how a thoroughly incompetent administration, motivated solely by self-interest, left our ambassador and others to be murdered and then lied about it with consequences to us all.



Were this a trial 's closing moments, counsel for the prosecution would be reminding the jury that if a witness has lied about a substantive matter in the hearing they can assume he's lying about everything.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Articles: Dangerous Times: Benghazi Revealed Collusion with Al Qaida

Like Watergate, Benghazi has several layers. But the most revealing one is the active collusion between this administration and Al Qaida.

Al Qaida is a Saudi-inspired and Saudi-funded terror gang. Almost all of the terrorists on 9/11 were Saudis. Those facts are always covered up, but they are crucial to understanding the Jihad War.

In Benghazi we ran arms from Libya to Al Qaida rebels in Syria. The Saudis are funding that rebellion.

There's that Saudi link again.

Also relevant to Syrian Crisis thread.

 

[Virendra]

Why is the US Administration colluding with Arabs, specially in painting the entire MENA by Sunni theology?
The US is not even a net importer of Oil anymore.

 

[Mad Indian]

Why is the US Administration colluding with Arabs, specially in painting the entire MENA by Sunni theology?
The US is not even a net importer of Oil anymore.

May be Because MENA is not near USA while India and China are??

 

[The Messiah]

Articles: Dangerous Times: Benghazi Revealed Collusion with Al Qaida


Also relevant to Syrian Crisis thread.

You seem to be coming back to the light side of the force

Although some parts in that article are bollocks.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Any synopsis on what she said.

While the State department did botch up its handling on the aftermath of the attack, I don't think they could have done anything to prevent the attack itself, other than not setting up the consulate in Bengazi.

H.Clinton lied, Obama lied, Susan Rise lied, saying that the attack was a response to an anti-Islamic video. They said al-Qaeda was on the run.

Look at where we are today.

US to temporarily shut down embassies around the world Sunday amid security concerns | Fox News

The United States will temporarily shut down its embassies and consulates around the world Sunday -- including those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt -- as a precautionary measure over terror-related concerns, State Department officials said.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf did not say how long the international installations would stay closed -- only that the decision was taken "out of an abundance of caution and care for our employees and others who may be visiting." Officials would not describe the nature of the threat.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

CIA 'running arms smuggling team in Benghazi when consulate was attacked' - Telegraph

The CIA has been subjecting operatives to monthly polygraph tests in an attempt to suppress details of a US arms smuggling operation in Benghazi that was ongoing when its ambassador was killed by a mob in the city last year, according to reports.