Misspeaker of the House

Misspeaker of the House

American Spectator - Friday October 2, 2015

When House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy blurted out on Fox News September 30 that “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we [the Republicans] put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping,” he blundered badly. But that is only a minor quiddity of what is at issue with the murder of four Americans at Benghazi. 

McCarthy showed himself incapable of differentiating between a national security issue and partisan politics. His flighty statement was a gaffe, the kind of gaffe that ought to give the Republicans of the House pause in choosing him for Speaker of the House. Yet Hillary and the Democrats attacked him with higher ambitions. They believed that McCarthy had, in his boasts to partisanship, incinerated the whole object of the House Select Committee’s investigation. Of course they are wrong. Once again they have committed the generic fallacy. The evidence remains untouched to haunt Hillary’s tenure as secretary of state and now there is more evidence provided by Hillary’s own aides and printed in the Washington Post. It reflects badly on her character.

The question is not who came up with the evidence against Hillary (presumably the Republicans) or what their intention was in employing it (we know what McCarthy had in mind), but the question is what is the validity of the evidence itself.

As of today, there is even more evidence against Hillary and her stewardship at State. As Jed Babbin and I revealed in the March 2014 issue of The American Spectator, Hillary refused our ambassador in Libya’s request for beefed up security and even reduced that security. The result was the ambassador’s death. This story has been public knowledge for months. Very probably it is contained in e-mails on her derelict server. As of yesterday the Washington Post published e-mails from her aides, Jake Sullivan and Sidney Blumenthal, urging her to take credit for American policy in Libya. 

With the fall of Moammar Gaddafi in Libya Blumenthal e-mailed Hillary, “Just a quick note: First, brava! This is a historic moment and you will be credited for realizing it.” About the same time Sullivan wrote her, after compiling a timeline of Clinton’s involvement in Libya: “it shows [Clinton’s] leadership/ownership/stewardship of this country’s libya [sic] policy from start to finish.” 

Well not quite “to finish.” On September 11, 2012, Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans were murdered as our Benghazi installation was overrun. By then Hillary wanted no credit for Libya at all. But the Congress and Americans in general should recall Sullivan’s e–mail. It speaks of Clinton’s “leadership/ownership/stewardship” of policy in Libya. She should be held accountable. In Libya she started a war and then she bugged out.

Bulletin: As we go to post, this arrives from the office of Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee:

“The Benghazi Committee was created to investigate a host of crucial questions, including why requests to increase security at the Benghazi Consulate before the attack were denied, why help wasn’t quickly dispatched after the attack began, and many others. Seeing as this attack resulted in four dead Americans including our ambassador, Congress rightly considers it a national priority to find answers to these questions.”

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