Benghazi: What Neither Hillary Nor the Republicans Want To Talk About, by James George Jatras

The headline says it all. The real story of Benghazi and Libya, from James George Jatras at antiwar.com:

As I write this, Hillary Clinton’s appearance before the House panel investigating the 2012 terrorist attacks that killed four Americans is still going on. I wasn’t able to listen to all of it live, and will plow through the transcript in due course.

Two things already are notable: one concerning the impact of the hearing itself – plus another aspect marked only by the sound of crickets chirping.

First, as one would have expected, the hearing has generated more heat than light. As has been the case to date, Republican lawmakers seem mainly interested in granular details of the State Department’s bureaucratic handling of the Benghazi post’s requests for more security, what did then-Secretary Clinton know and when did she know it, whether help could have and should have been sent and who stopped any such attempt, whether prompt action might have changed the outcome, questionable claims regarding a movie riling up the Muslim rabble, Hillary’s reliance on the expertise (or lack thereof) of Sidney Blumenthal, and all the other back-and-forth that’s dominated the issue since the events in question.

Democrats predictably shilled for her, the poor innocent victim of a GOP Star Chamber.

In short, nothing new.

Hillary boosters will be reinforced in their conviction that the inquiry is a witch hunt to hurt political prospects of the still-presumptive (especially with “Uncle Joe” Biden’s declining to run) Democratic presidential nominee. In supporting that conviction, the ill-phrased comments of abortive House Speaker candidate Kevin McCarthy were a godsend.

Conversely, Hillary-haters (who outnumber her fans, according to polling) will be buttressed in their conviction that she’s a lying incompetent with the blood of four Americans on her hands. (There’s nothing wrong with a witch hunt if you catch a real witch.)

Aside from digging Americans more firmly into the partisan points of view they already hold, little of importance is likely to result.

Which is unfortunate, because the hearing could have been a watershed in American foreign policy if someone on either side of the aisle had wished to pillory Hillary on an issue that screams out for public answers. But certainly no Democrat would do so for partisan reasons, and no Republican seemed to care. (One can only wish that Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich, or both, had been on that panel!)

That issue is what was really going on in Benghazi. Unremarked upon from the lawmakers’ bench was Clinton’s admission that the post in Benghazi was not a consulate, as it is uniformly reported in the media. She did refer several times to the CIA compound.

To continue reading: Benghazi: What Neither HillaryNor the Republicans Want To Talk About