Moving On

Helping the Seals Catch Osama

It is not without a large measure of disgust that we leave behind, at least for the moment, the quest for more information regarding the events of 9/11/2012 in Benghazi Libya. But it is now clear that we have received just about all the explanation and information we are ever going to get from the current administration.

It has been said, in so many words, that, in America, political partisanship should stop at the waters edge. We thought of this notion as we watched the testimony of the Secretary of State testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, at which the Democratic members of the committee heaped praise on the Secretary for her service over the past four years. Given that she was relinquishing her post, perhaps such testimonial was due,  but this was not the time nor the place. The meeting had been called to try and discern the causes of the Benghazi events, and who in the government should bear the responsibility. The media picked up where the Dems left off. The Boston Globe referred to those few senators asking the tough questions as "Benghazi blowhards".

As the Chief Executive of the United States, one would automatically look to the president to explain how one of our embassies came to be over run by an armed mob and our Ambassador murdered. We thought back quickly to the ubiquitous pictures of the Situation Room where the president and Secretary of State, among others, stared in rapt attention as the raid on Osama Bin Laden's lair was carried out. Success has many fathers (and mothers), failure is a lonely orphan.With regard to the events of 9/11/2012, we still have no idea where or when the president became aware of the unfolding events. But, he was quick to shift the responsibility down the chain of command. As is usually the case with this particular president, there was no cry raised by the media for further explanation.

We couldn't disagree more with the Secretary of State that "it doesn't matter"  how the raid on our embassy unfolded. But is was clear that anyone reviewing the information streaming in from Benghazi would have quickly realized that a full-blown terrorist attack was underway. Putting out a story attributing the attack to a spontaneous demonstration against an obscure video seemed laughable at the time, and even more laughable as the truth slowly leaked out. But the government stuck with this charade for days. And now, no one is quite sure just how that story was allowed to stand, up to and to including Susan Rice's marathon Sunday Morning appearances. The video was a fish story, but as bad as that fish story was, it was better, at least in the minds of some government officials, better than admitting the inept security precautions for our diplomatic corp and the totally inadequate response to the events as they unfolded, especially in the middle of an election.

So the official answer is that no one is really to blame, but we will make sure we do better next time. Algeria? Algeria is for the little people. The idea that the president's primary duty is to administer those vast areas of government for which he is directly responsible and the Secretary of State perhaps needed to pay attention to the management of her department rather than trying to amass a record number of frequent flier miles. In this day and age of the sound bite and the big idea, the management needs of the government are easily forgotten.

 And so we must, to some extent, move on less we become one of the lone voices crying into the wind. Gun control, immigration and the continuing saga of the federal deficit provide handy issues to redirect the attention of the electorate. But the questions of Benghazi will return, just in time for the 2016 presidential election, when we will hear that "those questions" have all been answered and the page has been turned. And the woman who couldn't find the time to read every cable, will be seeking the chief executive's job.

At Least She Showed Up

It all seemed to start with an extended love-fest orchestrated by the Democratic Committee Members, who fell all over themselves thanking Madam Secretary for her tireless service and olympian accrual of frequent flyer miles.

The take-away boiled down to just a few salient points:

The Secretary was, and presumable still is, fully responsible.

Nothing was her fault. It's a cruel world and stuff happens.

There were organizational lapses, and heads have rolled, sort of.

She can't read everything.

"What difference does it make?"

And isn't Congress partially to blame for its parsimonius funding?

Did we really expect a mea culpa?

For those searching for a more balanced analysis than what you might get from, say, the Boston Globe, check out the article on National Review On-Line.



http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/338619/benghazi-rhapsody-editors

Stay Tuned Today

At 9:00 this morning, The Secretary of State will appear before a public meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee regarding the September 11th attack in Benghazi.
at 2:00 pm, she will meet with the House Foreign Affairs  Committee to discuss the same topic. Lawmakers continue to have many questions regarding the government's reaction, or lack thereof, on the terrorist attacks on the U.S. Consulate in which the American  Ambassador, and three other Americans, were killed. More troubling, perhaps, was the government-issued explanation which pointed to a spontaneous civil demonstration on the attack, rather than an organized terrorist attack. This explanatory disconnect, which was allowed to stand long after the truth was generally known, raised many questions, most still unanswered.

In our most recent post, we suggested that Madam Secretary might well leave office without appearing before congressional committees. We are pleased that she has finally heeded the call to appear and answer questions. Apparently she will do the former. We hope that she will also provide the widely sought information that is sorely needed to begin to heal this wound to the national psyche

Still Waiting

Last month, we commented on the fact that the Secretary of State had still not appeared before a congressional committee to explain her department's handling of the Benghazi fiasco which resulted in the death of the American Ambassador and three other  Americans on September 11, 2012. To cut to the chase, it hasn't happened yet.

Yes, she was hospitalized at one point and it would be crass to suggest that her illness was just a touch too convenient. Of course it might also be considered out of line to release a misleading explanation of the Benghazi affair, even as it became clear that the truth lay elsewhere.

But if any questions linger as to the Secretary's physical fitness, we all might well have been re-asssured to read in this morning's Wall Street Journal, the following quote regarding this weeks' hostage taking at an Algerian gas field:

"It is absolutely essential that we broaden and deepen our counterterrorism cooperation going forward with Algeria and all countries in the region," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday.

I am sure that it was not lost on the Secretary that Libya is Algeria's next door neighbor.

So, in spite of her statement that she had the responsibility, it does not appear that an official explanation of the lack of response and misleading explanation of the Benghazi attack is forthcoming, even though, it would appear that the secretary is, indeed, back at the helm at State. Moreover, with John Kerry's confirmation hearing scheduled for this week, it is now apparent that the Mrs. Clinton intends to retire to Chappaqua without shedding any light on the governments bungling of the Benghazi affair.

As was predicted in our last post, the clock is now running on the timing of the emergence of the "we turned that page" riff.

  

Still Waiting for Answers

For those of us that are calendar-impaired, it is now nearly four months since the awful events at Benghazi, Libya unfolded, leaving four Americans, including our Ambassador, dead at the hands of Islamic terrorists. Were it not for this terrible toll suffered in conjunction by a total destruction of diplomatic respect and protocol. the lack of response by the American Government would be laughable.

While many Americans think that this chain of events certainly raises to the highest level of governmental concerns, the president has chosen to push what little responsibility he has taken down the chain of command. The head of the CIA has been sacked, but not for any malfeasance related to his responsibility for the Benghazi deaths. Apparently several mid-level State Department drones were fired, but on further investigation, it seems that they haven't really lost their jobs after all.

All of which leaves us with Hillary, who is still(?) head of the State Department. While she did accept "responsibility" albeit phoned in from Peru, she has gone from being silent to, as of late, being invisible as well. Her strategy here seems to be to keep running out the clock until her replacement is sworn in.

This strategy should come as no surprise to those of us who remember the Clinton White House years with its chains of unanswered questions regarding Whitewater and those Rose Law Firm billing records. Assuming that she continues to be a no-show at the Congressional hearings on Benghazi, there is really only one last touch stone left in this saga. Hillary obviously subscribes to the Leona Helmsley school of social responsibility which might counsel: Hearings? Hearings are for the little people.

So now, the last remaining question is the over and under on the exact date that Hillary will turn the final page on responsibility. This would be the date on which some intrepid questioner will ask herself about the 9/11/2012 fiasco. The response will be a quick look of disbelief, followed by something along the line: We've been over and over that and it is, frankly, old news. We think the American people want to turn the page and put that behind us. When this happens, the campaign for 2016 will have officially begun.



 

Give Up or Fight On?

Dr. Larry P. Arnn

It has occurred to us that in spite of the millions of words written about last month's election, we may be looking in the wrong place for answers to many of the questions it produced.

By structure, we were forced to chose between two individuals, each representing a political party, one of whom emerged victorious, but by a small enough margin that some now speak of the United States as a House Divided. While the Democrats have retained the Presidency and a majority position in the Senate, Republicans continue to lead the House. As we creep ever closer to the fiscal Cliff, the dividing line is at the same time both stark and obscured.

During the election. the Left hammered away at the Republicans' purported lack of empathy for the needy of America. The charges were colorful, but not helpful in that they steered attention away from the key issues as they created the illusion of an infinitely wealthy upper crust refusing to help those less fortunate. Millionaires and Billionaires became the bogeymen of the day. If only those fattest of cats would pay their "fair share", all would be well. Would that it be so easy. The Federal deficit is ballooning to the point that even a 100% tax rate wouldn't help for very long. The focus, as of late, has been on tax rates, but the real issue is runaway spending. "Tax and Spend" has morphed into "Spend, Tax, Borrow and Print More Money." We don't have to look farther than some of our European neighbors to see where this strategy leads.

For his first two years in office, The President's party had full control of both chambers of the Legislature.  This period of free reign, that is, free, to some extent of the normal checks and balances provided by the government's design, produced several blockbuster bills, that might have, had there been more balance, emerged in a more effective form, or, perhaps, not at all. In spite of the stacked deck, the Affordable Care Act was passed only through parliamentary shenanigans that would have impressed Houdini. Many of us are still not sure exactly what it does, or what it might eventually cost.  Yes, there were, and still are, serious concerns regarding health care, serious enough to merit open debate and discussion and perhaps some carefully crafted remedies.

During the same two-year reign, a massive federal stimulus bill was also passed. This Keynesian handout failed miserably in its stated purpose of stimulating the economy as it was tightly aimed at the Left's special interests. These two acts were the headliners in a spending spree which threatens to push the Federal deficit to astronomical levels, where amounts of less than a $ hundred billion are now considered rounding errors. The effects of unfettered deficit growth are both real and frightening.

Many in both the government and the media are quick to point to the Republican-led House as the fly in the ointment. We would rather argue that the House is performing the exact role for which it was designed in demanding fiscal responsibility. John Boehner, for all his barnacles, stands as a colossus against  this rush to fiscal perdition.  Checks and balances are not just quaint antiques. Yes, the President won re-election, but the office to which he was elected was President, not Emperor. We suggest that he might dust off his constitutional law text books while he vacations.

A tip of the hat to Dr. Larry P. Arnn , president of Hillsdale College, for his comments in a recent radio interview with Hugh Hewitt. Click on the link to read a transcript as presented in the December issue of Hillsdale's publication, Imprimis. Dr. Arnn does an excellent job of putting the constitutional concerns stemming from the results of the November election into historical context. His resounding answer to the query: "Time to Give Up or Time to Fight On?" is a resounding call for a redoubling of effort by all right-thinking Americans.

The Shores of Tripoli

The Marine Hymn is a piece of music that quickly stirs up our patriotism. And while the lyrics are  familiar, their meaning sometimes becomes dulled by time for many of us. Just over a month ago, a United States Ambassador and three other Americans were brutally killed in Benghazi, yet another city in the tiny country of Libya, located just a few hundred miles east of Tripoli. These terrible events have brought the meaning of an old and familar refrain front and center once again.

As if the pain of losing four of our own is not painful enough, the fantastic charades being carried on by the O Bama administration has added an additional measure of torment to the grieving families and friends of these fine men whom we pray did not die in vain.

Writing in the National Review web site,  Missouri Republican Senator, ROY BLUNT, who sits on the Senate Select Committee on Inteligence, provides a concise review of the government's mishandling of the aftermath of this tragedy. If it weren't for the horrific nature of the attack and murders, the bumbling cocophony of explanations being put forth, as late as last night's debate, would be great comic theatre. This president and his band of political operatives, has a lot to answer for.

Finally, our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to Barbara Doherty of Winchester, MA, at the tragic loss of her son Glen, one of the former Seals, killed in the Benghazi terrorist attack on 9/11/2012. Glen was much too good a man to have his death tarnished by the amateurish ineptitude of the O Bama government.

R.I.P. Glen