Posted on 05/07/2013 6:53:36 AM PDT by lasereye
When it first became clear that the CIA’s Benghazi talking points had been altered, many of us viewed the White House as the prime suspect. After all, it served President Obama’s political purposes to claim, at the height of a political campaign in which he was taking credit for the fall of al Qaeda, that the death of a U.S. ambassador was down to spontaneous outrage over a video, rather than pre-planned terrorism.
It turns out, however, that the State Department was the prime culprit. It was State that pushed back hard against the original talking points. The White House, probably for the political reason cited above, took its side.
Why did State want the talking points changed? Because it had ignored warnings about rising terrorist activity in Libya and had reduced security rather than beefing it up, as our embassy requested.
Under these circumstances, it would not do to attribute the Benghazi killings to the terrorism about which top State Department officials had been warned. Much better to lump what happened in Libya together with the protests that occurred in Egypt, and thereby characterize it as a demonstration that went too far, rather than premeditated terrorism.
Was Hillary Clinton directly involved in this cover-up? It’s difficult to see how she could not have been.
As I understand it, when State pushed back against the CIA’s talking points, a White House meeting was scheduled to thrash out the issue. One can imagine Clinton failing to keep apprised of something as mundane as a mounting threat to be safety of her personnel in Libya. But surely she was in the loop when it came to a bureaucratic struggle about how our U.N. ambassador was going to spin the Benghazi debacle. And surely, her representatives would not attend the meeting in which that bureaucratic struggle was to be resolved without being able to state the desires of the Secretary of State.
Hillary Clinton, then, is culpable at the front end of the Benghazi disaster — when she and/or her agents ignored requests for enhanced security — and at the back end — when she and her agents engineered an attempted cover-up. Her culpability during the attacks is doubtful in my opinion, but I would still like to know what she was doing during those tragic hours.
In a serious society, Benghazi, standing alone, would spell the end of Hillary Clinton’s public career. But there is much more.
The signature initiative of her time as Secretary of State — the “reset” with Russia — was a fiasco or a farce, depending on how seriously one took it to begin with. I would have had trouble taking seriously an initiative launched with the aid of a fake reset button, even if Clinton had used the correct Russian word for “reset.”
We should also remember that Clinton managed to lose the presidential nomination in 2008 despite having a huge lead and major advantages over her relatively unknown rival. She lost in part because she and her staff couldn’t figure out the importance of winning caucuses in a host of “off-the-beaten-path” states.
Finally, there should be no statute of limitations on Hillarycare. On big matters, failure is the norm for Hillary Clinton.
Despite all of this, Clinton finds herself the overwhelming favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, if she seeks it. And I gather that she is favored to win the general election, as well.
Will Benghazi derail her? I wouldn’t bet on it. First, it’s far from clear that, in 2016, the electorate will still care much about what happened in Benghazi (did it ever?) and about subsequent lying about the nature of the attacks.
Second, and relatedly, before Benghazi can hurt Clinton, someone needs the courage to raise the issue. Would Clinton’s serious Democratic rivals (if any) have that courage? Or would they fear a backlash from an essentially pacifist base that sees this as a Republican issue, and therefore irrelevant, and that is that may be hell bent on nominating a female.
Would a Republican nominee have the requisite courage? Or would he fear a backlash from female voters offended about suggestions that the first woman candidate for president is, simultaneously, too weak and too conniving for the job?
Perhaps the specter of Benghazi, or simple embarrassment over it, will dissuade Clinton from even entering the race. But I wouldn’t bet on that either.
Almost certainly the answer is yes. It would be tricky I admit, mainly because the media will come to her defense, but IF the GOP candidate does it well enough and DOESN'T sound apologetic about it, it could work. One danger would be that the GOP candidate starts to bring it up, then mostly drops it after the initial massive retaliation from the media/Democrats. They would have to be ready for that and keep on slugging. There's also the likelihood that they would fail to explain it well enough as GOP candidates almost always fail to do
They should portray her as dishonest and use that exchange where she says "What difference does it make?" in commercials. Just run that over and over with Hicks saying "We knew it was a terrorist attack from the get go" etc.
Culpable? That’s an awful big word for the low-information voter to process. All they know is that Robert Culp co-starred with Bill Cosby and that he’s dead.
In the commercial, following up the "What difference does it make?" with an answer (punctuated by the images of the four dead): "The lives of four patriotic Americans, that's the difference!"
Looks like our Dark-Skinned Male President is clearing the path for his wife to succeed him as Presidentette.
Or they're going to think they're hearing, "Gulpable"... at which point they'll discover they're thirsty and jonesing for a "Big Gulp" and you'll have lost them. We have to be careful not to fill their little cranial thimbles with firehoses of information. They'll just shut down.
Okay, I will, as is my wont, tell the Republicans how to handle this.
Get some movies/video of those four Americans...maybe playing with their dog, hugging their child....something like that. Make a montage of all four of the dead guys, cute little scenes that show them doing what Americans do when not being left to die by their own countrymen.
Now, after a nice montage of video clips guaranteed to bring tears, get that awful shrill woman’s yelling...”WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?”
Make sure the video montage has the dead men’s names, the names of their dog....make it maudlin....put up short verbiage clips like what they wanted to do someday, dreams they...pay some Hollywood dude to make a great little clip. For enough money anything can be done.
All the while have Hillary keep asking over and over...
WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE!
Americans will be screaming for that awful Hillary woman who is the WORST Secretary of State EVER and her Obama enablers.
What difference, at this point in time, does it make?
If the objective is to save America from the dogs, the GOP-e must be exterminated now ~ not later.
Exactly. Don’t pull any punches just because she’s a woman and has the media defending her.
OK, so we’re now supposed to be more concerned about private citizen Hitlery running for president in 2016 than the traitor in the white hut committing crimes and “fundamentally transforming America”?
Hillary is 49% responsible for this. Barry is 51% culpable.
She was SOS, but he was the boss.
It’s in Joe Biden’s interest to see that the scandal is laid at Clinton’s feet. He is running for president already.
“They should portray her as dishonest and use that exchange where she says “What difference does it make?” in commercials. Just run that over and over”........
I would be doing this every day from now until after the election. Her political career needs to be gone and done with FOREVER, much like Odumbo and the rest of his ilk.
If I were “Congress” I would hold the hearings; make sure that this failure is the legacy of the Clinton SoS by using the words failure and dereliction of duty over and over again. Show how she actively worked to get those men killed. See how far you can take it.
Maybe try for a special prosecutor.
If that wasn’t enough then I would give the Congressional Medal of Honor that is given to citizens by Congress to the 4 people who were murdered. Big ceremony, maybe a big parade. Televised. Make sure that it is known that Hillary was specifically not invited by the families.
Then I would bring back the families in 2016 if Hillary starts to run for Presidential office to remind people of what a callous failure she was. Have them hold up the medals and ask America not to let their sons be betrayed again.
It isn’t that she just a flaming liberal - it’s that she’s an heartless, corrupt idiot who is totally unqualified for office. She must be taken out of politics.
But, hey, what do I know.
Ya gotta add some cuts to a bedroom door with snoring and people knocking saying “Mr. President? Sir, we have a situation...” snoring....
You could be on to something. After kissing hillary’s ass , covering and lying when necessary for her over the years, for the media to suddenly turn on her, there has to be a reason. Or they could be setting a trap for the Conservatives and Republicans to fall into. As the residents of Troy learned long, beware of your enemy bearing a gift.
Actually, I know he'd put it that way ~ a similar enemy ~ only interested in itself, Carthage, like the GOP-e, would rather have it's own candidates lose than allow a traditionalist, social conservative, fiscal conservative, defense conservative or right to lifer run the race!
Carthage was always more difficult with its allies and coalition partners than it was with Rome!
“It’s in Joe Biden’s interest to see that the scandal is laid at Clinton’s feet. He is running for president already.”
White Uncle Tom?
In order for the public to be concerned, they have to be told by the MSM to be concerned. And, the MSM will not do that. Can you I imagine if Nixon was a Democrat? Watergate would only be some relatively unknown Washington DC hotel.
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