Remove this man immediately

Fucking nightmare.

And yeah, sure, great at names: North Atlantic Treaty Organization of the Middle East.  I'm going to have to guess he either 1) doesn't know that the NA in NATO stands for North Atlantic, or 2) has no fucking clue where the Middle East is, or 3) is just starstruck by the letters ME.

Christ.

New rationale for assassinating Soleimani:  He did what Obama failed to do - protect our embassy.

And nobody thanked him for it, but that's okay, right?

Obviously can't even remember the initials, much less the actual title.

What's the real story behind Trey Gowdy's Ethics resignation?

South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy resigned his membership on the House Committee on Ethics to concentrate on his other legislative duties.

  Daily Caller

Why does this make me immediately think he has an ethics problem?

His new position as Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee prompted the resignation, according to a letter Gowdy sent to House Majority Leader Rep. Paul Ryan.

[...]

“When I became Chairperson of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform I knew I would not be able to keep all other committee assignments to include Judiciary, Intelligence and Ethics. Four committee assignments, including a Chairmanship, is a challenging workload,” he added.

So why accept another assignment? Or why wait until now to resign from one?

His tenure in Congress has been a rocky one. Gowdy, who was elected during the Tea Party wave of 2010, used $150,000 in taxpayer dollars to settle with a former aide who alleged he was fired for not focusing his investigative work on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Gowdy, a Tea Party Republican, spent two years and $7 million investigating Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as the chairman of the United States House Select Committee on Benghazi. In June of last year, the hyper-partisan endeavor found “no new evidence of culpability or wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton in the 2012 attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead."

  NCRM

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Blackmail?

In 1995, Congress passed a law requiring the federal government to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all campaigned on relocating the embassy and executing this law. But once in office, every one of them invoked a waiver in the law that allows them to hold off on the move if they deem it necessary to the national security interests of the United States to do so.

[...]

A trio of GOP senators [Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and Nevada Sen. Dean Heller] have introduced legislation that would cut security, construction, and maintenance funds for U.S. embassies around the world in half [except for the embassy in Tel Aviv] until the president moves the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

  The Intercept

Is that not a matter of national security?

Ironically, Cruz and Rubio loudly attacked the Obama administration for failing to properly secure the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

[...]

Eight months after the attack, Cruz wrote in the National Review: “Our brave men and women who continue to put their lives on the line every day in similar, dangerous situations deserve to know we are doing everything possible not only to protect them in the event of a terrorist attack, but also to deter these attacks from happening again. Better late than never.”

In the summer of 2016, Rubio lamented in a Breitbart post that “leadership was sadly lacking in this case and resulted in disaster” and called on the government to properly secure diplomats in the future.

It may be ironic, but it's par for the Congressional course.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Will a Hillary Clinton Administration Usher in a New McCarthy Era?

[C]ome January, Democrats will continue to be the dominant political faction in the U.S. — more so than ever — and the tactics they are now embracing will endure past the election, making them worthy of scrutiny. Those tactics now most prominently include dismissing away any facts or documents that reflect negatively on their leaders as fake, and strongly insinuating that anyone who questions or opposes those leaders is a stooge or agent of the Kremlin, tasked with a subversive and dangerously un-American mission on behalf of hostile actors in Moscow.

[...]

On Friday, WikiLeaks published its first installment of emails obtained from the account of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. Despite WikiLeaks’ perfect, long-standing record of only publishing authentic documents, MSNBC’s favorite ex-intelligence official, Malcolm Nance, within hours of the archive’s release, posted a tweet claiming — with zero evidence and without citation to a single document in the WikiLeaks archive — that it was compromised with fakes.

[...]

[M]ore than 4,000 people have re-tweeted this “Official Warning.” That includes not only random Clinton fans but also high-profile Clinton-supporting journalists, who by spreading it around gave this claim their stamp of approval, intentionally leading huge numbers of people to assume the WikiLeaks archive must be full of fakes, and its contents should therefore simply be ignored.

[...]

MORE INSIDIOUS AND subtle, but even worse, was what Newsweek and its Clinton-adoring writer Kurt Eichenwald did last night. What happened — in reality, in the world of facts — was extremely trivial. One of the emails in the second installment of the WikiLeaks/Podesta archive — posted yesterday — was from Sidney Blumenthal to Podesta. The sole purpose of Blumenthal’s email was to show Podesta one of Eichenwald’s endless series of Clinton-exonerating articles, this one about Benghazi.

[...]

Once WikiLeaks announced that this second email batch was online, many news organizations (including The Intercept, along with the NYT and AP) began combing through them to find relevant information and then published articles about them. One such story was published by Sputnik, the Russian government’s international outlet similar to RT, which highlighted that Blumenthal email. But the Sputnik story inaccurately attributed the text of the Newsweek article to Blumenthal, thus suggesting that one of Clinton’s closest advisers had expressed criticism of her on Benghazi. Sputnik quickly removed the article once Eichenwald pointed out that the words were his, not Blumenthal’s. Then, in his campaign speech last night, Trump made reference to the Sputnik article (hours after it was published and spread on social media), claiming (obviously inaccurately) that even Blumenthal had criticized Clinton on Benghazi.

[...]

Eichenwald, with increasing levels of hysteria, manically posted no fewer than three dozen tweets last night about his story, each time escalating his claims of what it proved. By the time he was done, he had misled large numbers of people into believing that he found proof that: 1) the documents in the WikiLeaks archive were altered; 2) Russia put forgeries into the WikiLeaks archive; 3) Sputnik knew about the WikiLeaks archive ahead of time, before it was posted online; 4) WikiLeaks coordinated the release of the documents with the Russian government; and 5) the Russian government and the Trump campaign coordinated to falsely attribute Eichenwald’s words to Blumenthal.

[...]

Just watch how this warped narrative played out in a very short period of time, with nobody wanting to get in the way of the speeding train for fear of being castigated as a Trump supporter or Putin stooge.

[...]

[W]hile Donald Trump’s candidacy poses grave dangers, so does group-think righteousness, particularly when it engulfs those with the greatest influence. The problem is that none of this is going to vanish after the election. This election-year machine that has been constructed based on elite unity in support of Clinton — casually dismissing inconvenient facts as fraudulent to make them disappear, branding critics and adversaries as tools or agents of an Enemy Power bent on destroying America — is a powerful one. As is seen here, it is capable of implanting any narrative, no matter how false; demonizing any critic, no matter how baseless; and riling up people to believe they’re under attack.

  Glenn Greenwald

Read the full article to understand what happened/is happening.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Wasn't That Great?!

We killed Gaddafi.  Yippee!

President Barack Obama stated (atfp.co/1kyBt2i) in a speech to the nation on March 28, 2011, "The task that I assigned our forces [is] to protect the Libyan people from immediate danger, and to establish a no-fly zone," adding explicitly, "Broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake."

[...]

At the eleven-hour United States House Select Committee on Benghazi hearing yesterday, Sec. Hillary Clinton said something in passing that has received no attention by the committee members or the media. When asked by Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) about a video clip that read, “We came, we saw, he died [meaning former Libyan President Muammar al-Gaddafi]. Is that the Clinton doctrine?” Clinton replied, “No, that was an expression of relief that the military mission undertaken by NATO and our other partners had achieved its end.”

[...]

[A] committee member could have pressed Clinton to explain why U.S. objectives shifted so markedly from protecting civilians to killing Qaddafi. Or, if regime change was the intended policy objective from the very beginning, why didn’t President Obama say so to the American public?

  Micah Zenko

And honestly, the American public would have been okay with that.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ooops

House Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy appears to have accidentally released the name of a CIA source in the midst of a back-and-forth with Democrats about how sensitive the information was and whether its presence in former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email account constituted a security breach.

  Politico

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Hillary's Email

March 5

Hillary Clinton responded to intense scrutiny over her email practices on Wednesday, saying she has asked the State Department to make available her private email during her tenure as secretary of state.

"I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible," Clinton wrote in a tweet posted late Wednesday evening.

  Huffington Post

March 29

Members of the US House of Representatives hoping to get a look at Hillary Clinton's personal email server just got a big disappointment. Clinton's attorney has confirmed to a House committee on Benghazi that, after handing over work-related email to the State Department, the politician both "chose not to keep" personal messages and set a 60-day limit on what the server retains. In short, she effectively wiped it clean. There's no going back to mail from her Secretary of State days beyond the 30,490 messages on the record, or roughly half of what the server held during the period.

  Engadget

She wants the public to see here emails - just not the ones she deleted.

And, may I ask, doesn't the NSA have copies?

As the Tune Changes

In a reversal, the State Department acknowledged Friday that a Congressional investigation into the attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi played a role in the agency’s decision to ask Hillary Clinton and three other secretaries of state to turn over copies of all work-related emails they sent or received on private accounts during their tenure.

State spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters that a special House committee’s ongoing probe into the Benghazi incident was one of many factors that led the department to send a request last October that resulted in Clinton sending her former agency 55,000 pages of emails she exchanged on an unofficial account.

[...]

“It would be grossly simplistic to say that any one thing prompted us to send this letter.”

Earlier this week, Harf and other state department officials said the decision to approach the former secretaries about searching their personal email accounts stemmed solely from a broad effort to update the State Department’s electronic recordkeeping efforts.

  Politico

If you can’t directly reverse yourself in a matter of hours or a few days, you do not qualify to be a politician or work for the US government.

A State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also said Tuesday that the request for Clinton’s records was “independent” of and unrelated to the Benghazi probe.

Shall we ask that person today?

POLITICO reported Friday that White House officials became aware in August that documents sought in the House Benghazi investigation contained Clinton’s private email address. The White House flagged the issue to the State Department and Clinton aides, but the former secretary’s staff decided to take no action at that point.

You just cross your fingers and hope that by the time the public finds out, they won’t care. SOP.

A top adviser to President Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, suggested that Clinton’s reliance on private email for official work went against clearly established White House directives.

[...]

Jarrett declined to say directly whether Clinton violated policy, saying such a determination was for State to make. “We established the policy here, but then we leave it up to every single agency to determine how to adhere to that policy,” the Obama adviser said.

Makes deniability much easier.

“Each individual employee has a responsibility under the federal regulations to preserve their own records. With a State Department account or a personal account, when you walk out the door, it is your responsibility to provide those,” Harf said.

“When you walk out?” a reporter asked, alluding to the fact that Clinton did not provide her records when she departed, but some 23 months later.

“There was no time [requirement.] That was colloquial,” Harf replied. “Thank you for fact-checking me live and instantaneously during my press briefing. You should come more often. I like it.”

A bit testy? That reporter will not be called on in future. Better send somebody else to cover the White House.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Add Seoul to Benghazi

North Korea [news agency] has said the razor attack on the US ambassador to South Korea, Mark Lippert, was “just punishment” for the two countries’ joint military drills. The assault has left the US official’s face slashed, but he is now recovering.

[...]

The man responsible for the attack was arrested and has been identified as a 55-year-old Kim Ki-jong, Reuters reported. Notably, this isn't the first time Kim has attacked a foreign diplomat, as he was jailed in 2010 for throwing a piece of concrete at a Japanese ambassador.

[...]

“The US has been in South Korea since 1950. Many progressive activists [there] feel that the US military presence – tens of thousands of troops – a half a century later is not to protect South Korea from North Korean aggression, but to exercise dominance over South Korea’s political establishment and to maintain US military bases in this very important part of Asia,” according to Brian Becker, director of the Answer Coalition, speaking to RT.

[...]

“We do notice that the United States occupies 130 countries with a thousand military installations and keeps some countries as divided as it has in the case of the Korean peninsula – that can only lead to heightened tension.”

  RT

Oh, yeah. It’s always OUR fault.

It’s getting rough on ambassadors these days. Of course, it will just be blamed on the Democrats' incompetence at security.

Why the Latest Clinton Scandal Matters

2016 just got much more interesting.

[...]

Hillary Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state, violating federal regulations that officials’ correspondence be retained as part of the agency’s record and thus subject to Freedom of Information Act and Congressional requests. Clinton did not have a government email address during her entire four-year tenure, and her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act.

It was only two months ago, in response to a new State Department effort to comply with federal record-keeping practices, that Clinton’s personal advisers reviewed tens of thousands of pages of her emails and decided which ones to turn over to the State Department. All told, 55,000 pages of emails were given to the Department. The contents of the rest are known only to Clinton insiders. The process Clinton’s advisers used to determine which emails related to her work at the State Department were turned over has not been explained.

[...]

The Clinton email domain is officially registered to a Jacksonville, Florida company called PERFECT PRIVACY, LLC. The company advertises itself by saying “By signing up for Perfect Privacy when you register your domain, our information is published in the WHOIS database, instead of yours.” That means Perfect Privacy acts as a cut-out, hiding the actual person or organization that set up the domain by sticking its own information online instead.

[...]

Republican Trey Gowdy, who chairs the House committee investigating Benghazi stated Clinton had more than one private email account. “The State Department cannot certify that have produced all of former Secretary Clinton’s emails because they do not have all of former Secretary Clinton’s emails nor do they control access to them,” he said.

[...]

The most basic reason this all matters is because it is the law. As Secretary of State, Clinton was required to maintain her emails as official records. She did not. She choose not to follow the law. Since 2009, said Laura Diachenko, a National Archives and Records spokeswoman, federal regulations have stated that “agencies that allow employees to send and receive official electronic mail messages using a system not operated by the agency must ensure that federal records sent or received on such systems are preserved in the appropriate agency record-keeping system.” The question isn’t whether Clinton was allowed to have a private email account; she was, as secretaries of state before her did. The question is whether she was allowed to be the steward of the archives under the 2009 Federal Records Act. She was not.

[...]

It also matters because Clinton’s email actions were deliberate, and included an effort to hide what she was doing. Her email domain was registered in a way to hide its actual ownership (still unknown), and was set up just as she re-entered public life.

[...]

A careful analysis of Clinton’s testimony on Benghazi will need to be made to look for signs of possible perjury. If anything in the Clinton emails is new and relevant to understanding what happened in Benghazi, she should be held to explain why it was not revealed at the time of her [Benghazi] testimony.

[...]

One assumes most major new organizations are drafting their FOIA requests as we speak.

  

Now THAT could be thorny, considering what we know of the Benghazi incident. It may be time for the Clintons – and Perfect Privacy – to get out the digital shredders.

“We have no indication that Secretary Clinton used her personal e-mail account for anything but unclassified purposes,” State Department deputy spokesperson Marie Harf said Tuesday.

And no indication that she didn’t, either. And, of course, not all things that are corrupt or indeed illegal are classified.

Clinton as a leader allowed herself to be held to lower standards than that of her own rank and file. This, along with the decision to hide the emails itself and the violations of law, will raise questions about what type of president she might make.

Pretty much the same kind we have now and have had for decades. In fact, the Bush White House had been doing the very same thing.

Under such conditions, people will be muttering “Hey, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”

[...]

And what about that famous Clinton Blackberry? Blackberry messages go through a special server run by an organization itself. State maintains such a server for its staff’s required use. Did Hillary’s Blackberry run through a State server or a private one? Let’s ask.

I’m pretty sure some member of the GOP will cover that.

Can we subpoena the NSA records?  They've surely got her emails.

Benghazi

Democrats and anti-Republicans ridicule the rallying cry of Hillary haters: "Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi," they say in a rolling-eyes tone intended to convey the idea that the incident at the US Libyan compound was a molehill out of which the Republicans want to make a mountain.  We're probably soon in for a lot more of this as Hillary takes the campaign stage.

I want to see a Benghazi movie.  I think it would be riveting.    Certainly a better true story than the killing of Bin Laden (Zero Dark Thirty, which I didn't see).  Notwithstanding the idea that an assassination, even of a bad guy, is not something to be proud of, they had to sex up the killing of Bin Laden, because, how exciting is it to walk into an unarmed man's bedroom and shoot him?  And then dump his body in the ocean.  (Do you think they really did?)

The Benghazi affair, on the other hand, has lots of plot.  Pretty much all of it a comedy of errors combined with amazing ineptitude by the Hillary Clinton led US State Department.  And why in the world did they have unarmed Libyan guards at the compound?  Were they so roundly hated that they were afraid the guards might turn the guns on them?  What's the point of an unarmed guard in a city beset by continual attacks on foreign targets?  Perhaps they're just mis-described.  Perhaps they should have been called lookouts.  Anyway...that's not a take-away.  It's just a curiosity to me.

Check out this Guardian analysis:  http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/us-consulate-benghazi-attack-challenge

UPDATE:  It looks like I may have my choice of two equally bad Benghazi movies.  They're both going to glorify the "heroic" efforts of the small team of security members.  It'll be like the Alamo.

The Real Benghazi Scandal?

Five commandos guarding the C.I.A. base in Benghazi, Libya, in September 2012 say that the base chief stopped them from interceding in time to save the lives of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and an American technician during the attack on the diplomatic mission there.

In a new book scheduled for release next week and obtained by The New York Times, the commandos say they protested repeatedly as the base chief ordered them to wait in their vehicles, fully armed, for 20 minutes while the attack on the diplomatic mission was unfolding less than a mile away.

[...]

He hoped to enlist local Libyan militiamen, and the commandos speculate that he hoped the Libyans could carry out the rescue alone to avoid exposing the C.I.A. base.

[...]

The book, titled “13 Hours,” is the first public account of the night’s events by any of the American security personnel involved in the attack.

[...]

American officials have previously acknowledged that the Central Intelligence Agency security team paused to try to enlist support from Libyan militia allies. But the book is the first detailed account of the extent of the delay, its consequences for the rescue attempt, and who made the decisions.

[...]

“If you guys do not get here, we are going to die!” a diplomatic security agent then shouted to them over the radio, the commandos say in the book, and they left the base in defiance of the chief’s continuing order to “stand down.”

  NYT

Benghazi Again

The State Department said an unspecified number of US embassies and consulates in Muslim countries will be closed for a day or more due to a “specific threat”. The announcement comes as the anniversary of the US consulate attack in Benghazi approaches.

"We have instructed all US embassies and consulates that would have normally been open on Sunday to suspend operations, specifically on August 4th," the BBC cites State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf has been quoted as saying.

“Security considerations have led us to take this precautionary step,” Harf told reporters.

Or a need for distraction from Jake Tapper’s latest article.

Benghazi Again

CNN has uncovered exclusive new information about what is allegedly happening at the CIA, in the wake of the deadly Benghazi terror attack.

[...]

Sources now tell CNN dozens of people working for the CIA were on the ground that night, and that the agency is going to great lengths to make sure whatever it was doing, remains a secret.

[...]

Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency's missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency's workings.

The goal of the questioning, according to sources, is to find out if anyone is talking to the media or Congress.

It is being described as pure intimidation, with the threat that any unauthorized CIA employee who leaks information could face the end of his or her career.

[...]

"Agency employees typically are polygraphed every three to four years. Never more than that," said former CIA operative and CNN analyst Robert Baer. [Rep. Frank] Wolf has repeatedly gone to the House floor, asking for a select committee to be set-up, a Watergate-style probe involving several intelligence committee investigators assigned to get to the bottom of the failures that took place in Benghazi, and find out just what the State Department and CIA were doing there.

  Jake Tapper

I think we all know those investigations are rigged. Let’s hear it from the next bold leaker.

Speculation on Capitol Hill has included the possibility the U.S. agencies operating in Benghazi were secretly helping to move surface-to-air missiles out of Libya, through Turkey, and into the hands of Syrian rebels.

It is clear that two U.S. agencies were operating in Benghazi, one was the State Department, and the other was the CIA.

The State Department told CNN in an e-mail that it was only helping the new Libyan government destroy weapons deemed "damaged, aged or too unsafe retain," and that it was not involved in any transfer of weapons to other countries.

But the State Department also clearly told CNN, they "can't speak for any other agencies."

The CIA would not comment on whether it was involved in the transfer of any weapons.

We don’t have to tell YOU.

Speaking of the Kill List

February 21, 2013

Both members of the House and Senate have demanded as of late that the Obama administration explain more about the president’s ability to execute Americans suspected of terrorist activity without ever taking them to trial. Members of his own party have continuously pressed President Obama to disclose more information on his targeted kill program to no avail.

[...]

In lieu of opening up about the justification for killing his own citizens, Pres. Obama will reportedly instead offer up instead intelligence about last September’s incident in Libya that left four Americans dead, including US Ambassador Chris Stevens.

[...]

According to the New York Times, Obama administration officials are in talks with members of the Republican Party that are expected to end with the White House opening up about Benghazi. In making that decision, though, the paper reports that the commander-in-chief will ignore pleas from his own political party to discuss his overseas drone program, his ability to wage extrajudicial killings on US citizens and his secretive kill list.

[...]

“I recognize that in our democracy, no one should just take my word that we’re doing things the right way,” the president said during his State of the Union address this month. “So, in the months ahead, I will continue to engage with Congress to ensure not only that our targeting, detention and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our laws and system of checks and balances, but that our efforts are even more transparent to the American people and to the world.”

  RT

Apparently, he did say that. The report comes from February this year. I think that was about the time Edward Snowden stuffed a thumb drive with secret documents and called in sick.

This is Why We Don't Get to See More of Glenn Greenwald

He's smart, he's rational, and he knows what he's talking about.



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

If He Wants Her, He'll Have Her

So there. Perhaps this is why Rice and the administration backed off so easily on her nomination to State.

US ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice is lined up to become President Barack Obama’s national security adviser after the disappointment of being forced out of contention for secretary of state, it was reported on Sunday.

According to the Washington Post, Rice has emerged as the “far and away” favourite to replace incumbent national security adviser Thomas Donilon later this year.

  Raw Story

Win-win for Obama. Republicans have no say, and she gets a spot in the administration anyway. And after criticism for a second term surrounded by white men, Obama gets a dark face and a woman all in one, saving another space for a white man.

And why wouldn't he want Rice?  She's a corporate/government shill all the way.  What's not to love? She put her neck on the line to be the one who tried to foist the crazy rabid Islamist angle on the Benghazi story, she has proven to be a loyal US interventionist defender, and she has ties to Big Oil.  And not just Big Oil, but specifically, to the Canadian tar sands environmental fight, as she owns big stock in TransCanada.  (You think there's a snowball's chance in Hell that pipeline isn't going through?)

It Only Gets Worse

Rather than agreeing to some Democratic senators' demands for full access to the classified legal memos on the targeted killing program, Obama administration officials are negotiating with Republicans to provide more information on the lethal attack last year on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, according to three Congressional staff members.

[...]

This is what happens when you elect someone -- anyone -- to the presidency as that office is presently constituted. Of all the various Washington mystery cults, the one at that end of Pennsylvania Avenue is the most impenetrable. This is why the argument many liberals are making -- that the drone program is acceptable both morally and as a matter of practical politics because of the faith you have in the guy who happens to be presiding over it at the moment -- is criminally naive, intellectually empty, and as false as blue money to the future. The powers we have allowed to leach away from their constitutional points of origin into that office have created in the presidency a foul strain of outlawry that (worse) is now seen as the proper order of things. If that is the case, and I believe it is, then the very nature of the presidency of the United States at its core has become the vehicle for permanently unlawful behavior. Every four years, we elect a new criminal because that's become the precise job description.

  Charlie Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Benghazi Fallout - Sate Resignations

Three US State Department officials have resigned after a damning investigation into the killing of the American ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, in Benghazi in on 11 September found “systematic failures” of leadership and “grossly inadequate” security.

The report said that US personnel on the ground acted with “courage and readiness to risk their lives to protect their colleagues, in a near impossible situation” during two sustained attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi and a nearby annex that killed Stevens and three other American officials.

But it also described confusion, lack of transparency and inadequate leadership at senior levels, and strongly criticised the use of a Libyan armed militia as security for the Benghazi consulate.

Those who resigned included the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, Eric Boswell; the deputy assistant secretary responsible for embassy security, Charlene Lamb; and a third official who was not named.

  Raw Story

And it wasn't Hillary Clinton. In fact, Hillary called in sick to the Congressional hearing that's going on today.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Report on Benghazi

Perhaps you read about the big stink over the possibility of Susan Rice, ambassador to Libya, being named the next Secretary of State. Perhaps you read that recently she penned a letter to the president saying she wanted her name withdrawn from consideration because the stink was a distraction from what he and she were really trying to do – protect the United States in these terrorist times. I suspect she was asked to pen that letter just like she was asked to step out front after the Benghazi attack and be the one to say the attack was over an insulting B movie. Being an Obama loyalist, or maybe just being a loyal ambassador, she did both. And the noble letter so very surprisingly, came just in time. Just before she would have gotten knocked out of the water by the report.  "Mr. President, this is what the report is going to say.  It's time to call Ambassador Rice."

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said she accepts the findings of an independent panel that faulted the State Department over the deadly September attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya.

An inquiry into the attack on the US mission, which saw the US ambassador and three other US citizens killed, found that the State Department security arrangements there were "grossly inadequate".

  alJazeera

When Susan Rice pens her autobiography, after her retirement from State, I wonder if she'll stay the loyalist, or “tell all.” I know which would make more money.

Clinton also ordered widespread changes to bolster US diplomatic security overseas.

[...]

The US would send hundreds of additional Marine guards to overseas posts, ask for more money for security improvements and name a new State Department official to oversee "high threat posts," she said.

Because, apparently, Hillary wasn't up to that task after all. And if she plans to run for president in 2016, this is going to be a big hammer in the hands of her rivals.

Citing the report, [Al Jazeera's Washington reporter Rosiland] Jordan said "there wasn't that sense of urgency" at the State Department to secure the diplomatic facilities particularly in countries undergoing political upheavals and revolutions.

The report found that there were "systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department [that] resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place."

So long, Hill.  Enjoy your retirement party.  Don't stutter during the mutual admiration speeches.