Nicknamed “Sid Vicious”, think of him as the Clintons’ Lee Atwater.
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The hearing by the U.S. House Select Committee on Benghazi was, indeed, a dismal affair [“Perpetual Partisanship”, Opinion, October 26]. At times, they suggested she was too detached; at other times, they accused her of micromanagement. Did she read them?
While Clinton’s performance was remarkable, it shouldn’t take that amount of prodigious self-control for a woman to avoid scrutiny over how she carries herself.
With those words, Hillary Clinton goes down in history precisely as her detractors had labeled her for decades: a proven, serial liar.
It was noteworthy that Clinton had no email or phone contacts with Ambassador Stevens but exchanged hundreds of emails with Blumenthal.
Republican members were unable to rattle her or get her to admit she lied when she initially blamed the attack on terrorists in emails to her daughter and in a call to Egypt’s prime minister but said in public that the attacks were inspired by a crude Internet video satirizing the Prophet Muhammad.
This politically driven crusade clearly is no longer about seeking the truth and the lessons of the 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, if it was ever about that at all.
“Here’s what I, and so many of my fellow Obama campaign veterans, have learned about Hillary: She doesn’t quit”.
People will believe what suits them. But the more probable truth concerning Benghazi is that the early story was a deception with a goal, which was to buy time until the administration and the CIA could figure out how to manage the crisis without exposing the intelligence agency’s operation in the area.
There may be no satisfactory explanation for why Stevens wasn’t provided more security after multiple requests or why those requests never reached Clinton’s desk.
During a particularly nasty line of questioning by Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., conservative Commentary Magazine editor John Podhoretz tweeted, “Why doesn’t Pompeo just go over and swear her in for president now – if he goes on like this he’ll practically get her elected”. Her response? The congressman’s threats are “pathetic” and “laughable” and “ridiculous”.
House Republicans may be fishing, but they are looking for sharks.
But despite furious efforts to spin the hearing as a win for Clinton by Democrats and their media allies, many Americans saw something else. In a State Department memo describing Clinton’s conversation with the Libyan president, she said: “We have asked for the Libyan government to provide additional security to the compound immediately as there is a gun battle ongoing, which I understand Ansar as Sharia [sic] is claiming responsibility for”.
Jordan said he plans to question Attorney General Loretta Lynch about the decision when she testifies before the House Judiciary Committee later this week, and how “they could arrive at this conclusion when I think all the facts point to someone was involved in criminal activity and I think it was Lois Lerner”.
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Even though nothing in the way of wrongdoing was found during the first six hearings, the Republican Party has shown its propensity for the absurd by holding yet another hearing, the seventh, on Benghazi.
