chris_gerrib (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chris_gerrib) wrote2014-05-07 08:58 am
chris_gerrib) wrote2014-05-07 08:58 am
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Benghazi is Not Watergate, Part Whatever
When saying “Benghazi is not Watergate,” it helps to remember what Watergate was. It was commission of felonies (breaking and entering, wiretapping) in an attempt to throw an election done at the behest of the sitting President. Saying that “the cover-up was worse than the crime” is not accurate. However, that cover-up was ordered by the President and designed to protect him.
Benghazi is (at worst) a series of bad judgment calls about the security posture of a remote diplomatic outpost. The “cover-up” is at worst an attempt to spin the attack into a spontaneous demonstration. Since there were several spontaneous demonstrations at the same time in the Arab world, saying “video caused attack” was at least plausible. Actually, if the video didn’t cause the attack, it was one hell of a coincidence.
In no event was the attack ordered by the President, nor was the response delayed by him. Simply put, we did not have any useful military assets at hand to respond faster than they did. Neither Obama nor Hilary Clinton personally managed the consulate’s security, and Ambassador Chris Stevens was apparently unconcerned enough to drive there and spend the night. Nakoula, the video-maker, was sentenced, not by Obama, but a Federal judge, to one year in jail on parole violations. He was released in 2013.
In short, there’s not much there. Most people, other than rabid partisans, understand that.
Benghazi is (at worst) a series of bad judgment calls about the security posture of a remote diplomatic outpost. The “cover-up” is at worst an attempt to spin the attack into a spontaneous demonstration. Since there were several spontaneous demonstrations at the same time in the Arab world, saying “video caused attack” was at least plausible. Actually, if the video didn’t cause the attack, it was one hell of a coincidence.
In no event was the attack ordered by the President, nor was the response delayed by him. Simply put, we did not have any useful military assets at hand to respond faster than they did. Neither Obama nor Hilary Clinton personally managed the consulate’s security, and Ambassador Chris Stevens was apparently unconcerned enough to drive there and spend the night. Nakoula, the video-maker, was sentenced, not by Obama, but a Federal judge, to one year in jail on parole violations. He was released in 2013.
In short, there’s not much there. Most people, other than rabid partisans, understand that.
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I still believe Hillary's involvement was not trivial. Remember how many years (i e decades) it took for the Tonkin Gulf incident to unravel, to be revealed as a convenient fiction. Knowing what, erm, shall we say callous tendencies Hillary showed towards those she regarded as underlings, and how the US military was viewed during the Clinton Administration, if it should eventually be revealed that this was Hillary's way (her only way, really) to hit back at the man who robbed her of her “entitlement” to the Democratic Presidential nomination, by sabotaging security on the eve of a high-probability attack date so as to create an embarrassing bad-press incident for that incumbent (that it cost American lives being irrelevant; they were just grunts, lumpenproles, probably Republicans anyway, certainly of no account to their betters in the limousine-liberal Georgetown cocktail-party elite)… I would not be at all surprised.
[Note that immediately after his re-election, Comrade Hillary was relieved of her duties - “for reasons of health.” Ah, yes…]
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Il nous faut de l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace!