Posted on 01/24/2013 6:39:26 AM PST by SeekAndFind
During her congressional testimony today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly defended her failure to see key cables dealing with Benghazi by noting how many cables the State Department receives. She explained there are 1.4 million cables to the department a year, all addressed to her as secretary.
That’s wrong — and this poor excuse is worth examining.
In fact, every cable sent from the department is signed “Clinton” as long as she is in Washington. If not, each cable bears the name of the acting secretary — usually deputy secretary Bill Burns. But it’s obvious that these cables are not actually from her, and many bear captions like “From the Assistant Secretary to the Ambassador.”
Similarly, cables sent to the department are not all to her; that is nonsense. They may be captioned “to SecState Washington,” but that of course means “to the Department.” They will often say for whom they are meant, e.g., “For NSC Powers, for DOD International Security Affairs, for State DRL, NEA, PM” and so on. And upon arrival at State they are distributed in accordance with set rules, to many bureaus and offices.
So which cables does the secretary actually see? There are two answers. First, an ambassador can caption a cable “From the Ambassador for the Secretary” or even “Eyes Only for the Secretary.” Obviously an ambassador can only rarely get away with this and his justification better be good. Such a cable will get to the secretary unless staff finds that it is foolish or worthless. One question not asked of Clinton: Did Chris Stevens ever send a cable during his entire tenure marked “From the Ambassador to the Secretary” and, if so, what did it say?
More often, a secretary of state sees the cables that his or her staff pulls out because they are important and should be seen. Figuring out what the incumbent secretary wants to see, will wish to see, and will be angry for not having seen is very difficult when there’s a new secretary — but what is Hillary Clinton’s excuse on September 11, 2012, after almost four years in office? There had been three and half years to set up a system, to let the career officers of the Secretariat and the Operations Center know what she wants, and to have her personal staff figure it out too.
That is to say, if she did not see the Benghazi cables in a timely fashion, if she did not see Chris Stephens’s cables describing the deterioration of security, and if she did not see his requests for more security, this was a huge management failure on her part. It is a poor excuse to say, “Gee, the Department gets lots of cables” — and perhaps even worse then to hide behind an Accountability Review Board that pins responsibility on assistant secretaries and no higher.
Having worked as an assistant secretary of state and a deputy national-security adviser, I can report that even in those posts one is entirely swamped by cable traffic and needs a system to cope with it — to be sure that the really important ones get through. From all the available evidence, Hillary Clinton failed to establish such a system for herself, and that management failure is a far more important fact about her tenure than being the third woman to hold the post or having flown more miles than Condoleezza Rice.
It might have been Tunisia. There were anti-American mobs there just like in Egypt, I believe. Maybe she called the government asking for them to protect our consulate in Tunisia, or our embassy or whatever.
These - along with Libya which was NOT a mob action but a terrorist attack - is what the feds are saying constituted a reaction to the VIDEO. Which neither people in that area, nor people anywhere for that matter, were actually aware of.
When you say you wish she had asked Obama for help with OUR consulate, well, when she was calling the Tunisian government or whereever it was, she was asking for help with OUR consulate. Whose consulate did you imagine she was asking for help with?
Now if it WAS Turkey and not Tunisia, well, I plead ignorance in that I wasn’t aware that Turkey produced worrisome anti-US demonstrations on 9-11. If they did, and she did say Turkey, then I stand corrected.
If she believes that such an "excuse" makes her State Department neglect of attention to the Ambassador's requests either acceptable or understandable, then she is totally incompetent as a CEO.
If check points by human eyes are not sufficient to trigger upper-management attention, then, surely, in this day of technological wonders, computers could be programmed to kick such cables directly to the desk of the Secretary of State.
The head of any Fortune 500 company would know how to structure his management team to avoid such a glaring calamity within his organization. If he didn't, then his Board would fire him when his incompetence was discovered.
Not that I would ever want her either, but honestly could she be any worse than the goofball in there now? At least she is Constitutionally eligible.
Everything the PIAPS touches turns to sh!t.
I love how Rand Paul basically handed her big fat arse and cankles back to her on a plate.
Until we stop the choosing of our President by the elite, we will have crap until then.
Negligence is not the issue with her, it is her utter contempt for underlings. My cousin was a white house guard during bubba’s rule and make no mistake, hillary demanded no eye contact be made with her. This disgusting chicago dyke should get the death penalty for standing by while 4 US citizens were murdered.
..............
The American people, Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) said, are “frustrated when they see comments from you this morning when you said, ‘What difference at this point does it make?’ I’ll tell you what difference it makes. It makes a difference when Americans think they were misled about something for political reasons.”
“Madam Secretary, you let the consulate become a death trap. And that’s national security malpractice,” Duncan said. “You said you take responsibility. What does responsibility mean, Madam Secretary? You’re still in your job, and there are four people at the Department of State that have culpability in this that are still in their jobs.”
‘Madam Secretary, You Let the Consulate Become a Death Trap’
She is a crook! From the billing scandal in her youth to the recent lies over the cause of the Benghazi scandal. SHE is the type of person the voters want. Look at what they elected as president-some one who does not even belong to our society.
Failure is the norm for her.Every job she had only required one thing hot air.
Hillary Clinton is the Tom Arnold of American politics - she’s only famous because of who she married.
Every one of her opponents in 2016 will have a devastating meme at their disposal:
"When Hillary Clinton got that phone call at 3 AM, she failed...miserably, a failure that cost American lives."
Or somesuch.
He wants that, needs it, to expunge the semen from that little blue dress. And everything that followed.
But wait a sec, my main point is that the premise of the article is flawed.
Hillary had Zero input (so to speak) in the Benghazi thing. That whole deal was Barky's -- he was in the house, he was watching the monitors, he was running the show that night when Al Q'aeda tried to kidnap the U.S. ambassador, to trade him for the Blind Sheikh in federal prison.
This was Bozo's deal all the way. Putting Hillary on the spot is just another diversionary measure of the MSM.
Barky needs to answer for Benghazi to an impeachment trial in the Senate.
It isn't "incompetence" when they're vigorously lying their asses off.
I knew Paul had done some good when I heard PBS talking heads telling everyone his questions were "nasty".
It was Tunisia. Thanks for the correction.
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