Terrorism: The bipartisan Senate report on the Benghazi attack is damning to both President Obama and ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She may be sorry she asked, "What difference does it make?"
The terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi killing our Libyan ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three others was bad political timing for President Obama, coming less than two months before Election Day in 2012.
For a while afterward, Obama peddled the ludicrous story it wasn't planned terrorism but a spontaneous demonstration against an anti-Muhammad YouTube video. In the second presidential debate, when exposed on misrepresenting the attack, Obama pointed to his generic statement on "acts of terror" the day after Benghazi, which CNN moderator Candy Crowley said supported Obama's new false claim.
A new Senate report settles this, pointing out that FBI and CIA review of closed-circuit video at the mission a week after the Sept. 11, 2012, assaults "showed there were no protests prior to the attacks."
But the long-overdue report goes much further:
• Hillary Clinton's State Department didn't act on warnings of inadequate security at Benghazi.
• Local Libyan militias were used for security at a U.S. facility in an area where terrorist training was going on, and were AWOL when the attacks occurred.
V The U.S. military command in Africa didn't know the Benghazi CIA annex, where two U.S. security personnel were killed, was there — apparently because, like the information wall that kept the CIA and FBI from preventing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, intelligence agencies kept vital information from the military.
• Similarly, the CIA's warnings of deteriorating security in the weeks before the attack somehow didn't reach the ears of the State Department.
• Our military wasn't prepared to defend the mission in an emergency.
• The CIA's elite operatives were not deployed at the high-risk facility.
The report concludes Benghazi could have been prevented. The CIA reported the month before the attack there were Islamist training camps and militants in Benghazi, some linked to al-Qaida. Plus, there were some 20 incidents in August indicating a "deteriorating security situation on the ground" in Benghazi.
President Obama's appointment of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state was one of the most politicized choices in history, done to close ranks in his favor within the Democratic Party and give the former first lady a big boost for the 2016 presidential race. Both Obama and Clinton are now damned by this bipartisan report for their mismanagement and corruption.
There is no excuse post-9/11 for either non-sharing of vital intelligence or security shortcomings at U.S. facilities in places swarming with terrorists. Yet, glaringly, Clinton is mentioned only a single time in the report.
"What difference at this point does it make?" Clinton asked Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., nearly a year ago.
The lives of four Americans serving their country, lost due to incompetence and politicization. That's what difference.
Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/011514-686514-benghazi-report-exposes-obama-and-clintons-incompetence.htm#ixzz2qaL8YZ91
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