Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Benghazi Hearings Rant – The Reality of the Situation.


So I’ve only discussed this a little bit, but after today’s performance from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, I feel like making a little rant to get some things off my chest. First of all I think I speak for most people when I say that I am very tired of the overuse of the phrase, “with all due respect.”

When I was in the Navy we were always taught to have respect for our seniors and not to disagree with them in public unless we first use the phrase, “with all due respect.” So using that phrase is equivalent to a lady in the south starting a comment about another person with the phrase, “Bless her/his little heart.”

Today I must have heard that phrase about a million times and in this overly-charged, politically-correct world that we live in I think it’s time for us to remove some of that political correctness and just lay it out as it really is. So here we go!!

The Benghazi debacle is the biggest bunch of SNAFU that I have seen since the stained dress, or Iran-Contra, or Watergate, or Scooter Libby, or the….well hell, I can’t go into them all, but safe it to say this is a mess and the real truth is pretty well been figured out but no one wants to just come out and admit to it all.

Today we had congressmen questioning the Secretary of State. Each of them got a whopping five minutes of time to question her and except for Secretary Clinton; NOONE was prepared for the day’s events. Between the grandstanding by the congressmen and the evasive avoidance of answering a question once posed, nothing was accomplished except a lot of cross talk and that smelly stuff you try not to step in while in a stable.

Now I am not going to get into too many details as I do not want to bore anyone and I am not writing a book, which I could with this mess. But I will touch on the main points and the ridiculousness of this all. First let’s go with the part that bothers me the most. Libya one of the hotbeds of foreign troubles then and now should have been one of the priorities of the foreign service; however, the new embassy in Tripoli and the consulate in Benghazi had less security as far as physical barriers and security personnel than those in England and France – HUH.

Just seems like this a war zone and the countless requests for more security from the personnel on the ground in Libya it would appear logical for more security to be provided here.  But apparently, due to the small number of personnel assigned to the embassy staff in Libya, more security was not authorized. Apparently the size of the staff and not the security of the country is the deciding factor involved with determining the size of the security detail assigned.

Of course the four State Department individuals responsible for this lack of common sense were later suspended from service as a publicity stunt with a Friday afternoon press release; however, they were later reassigned to other departments in the state department. So apparently their ineptness that resulted in the death of four people, including the U.S. Ambassador, was not enough to warrant their permanent removal from the service – AMAZING!!

Then let’s look at the talking points that were designed to deal with the immediate fallout associated with this horrible event.  Within 24 hours most everyone on the planet with even a modicum of intelligence knew this was a terrorist attack. But the Obama Administration’s story that this was a demonstration that got out of hand was the story that the administration went forward with for two weeks because they either thought no one would find out the truth, or that as a populace us Americans were just gullible enough to accept this ridiculous explanation.

Today Secretary Clinton tried to walk that back and say that she and the President both called it a specific act of terrorism right from the beginning. But other than speaking in generalities about the evil of terrorism n general, neither of them called it terrorism and both taped Public Service Announcements (or commercials) that played on Arab television apologizing for the video they continued to blame for the incident. Meanwhile four American families are burying their murdered loved ones back here in the states.

They believed that us American suckers would buy this whole story hook, line, and sinker. They even rolled out U.N. Ambassador (and former Secretary of State hopeful) Susan Rice to go on the Sunday morning new show circuit and recite this finely crafted lie in hopes that Americans would buy this poisoned bill of goods; and guess what, far too many of the voters did.

But now we know the truth, Rice was unleashed with a set of talking points designed to blame the deaths of these fine men on a video and not disclose the inadequate capabilities of the Secretary of State, her staff, the intelligence community at large, and even the President himself. Today Clinton said she was not there when these talking points were developed but that is a point of discussion also since there are currently five differing lists of who were in those meetings and she is on two of them. Which begs another questions, if there was a group meeting to determine what had happened and she was in Washington then why wasn’t she in that meeting?

Today, a rattled Hillary Clinton made the screaming statement that it did not matter if it was an organized attack or a group of individuals who decided to kill some Americans. Well I beg to differ when you reason in the fact that just a few days ago American intelligence and the Foreign Service missed the very organized attack on the petroleum production site in Algeria. An organized attack that utilized many weapons that will probably be traced back to the Libyans rebels we aided.

It would be interesting to find out how many of the weapons used in Algeria actually came from Libya. Of course we would have to be able to trace those weapons and since the current administration can’t even trace the weapons they allowed to be illegally sold and smuggled into Mexico, well I guess we’re not going to get anywhere with that investigation either. See how far the ineptness goes when there is a leadership vacuum at the top.

Today Secretary Clinton said that serving overseas in the Foreign Service was inherently dangerous and those who served knew that when they signed on. But I am sure they figured they would be given the resources to do their jobs with at least a minimum of security requirements. When I was in the Navy and we were overseas I always knew that many times we would be in a dangerous situation; you kind of take that for granted. But whether the President was Reagan, Bush, Clinton, or Bush again; I never felt like we were inadequately provided at least that minimal amount of security.

Then there is the argument that Hillary Clinton made trying to lessen the importance of the State Departments incompetence. She tried to rationalize their deaths by saying that they knew their job was hazardous and that their acceptance of that knowledge essentially excused the State Department for the incompetence that cost them their lives; as ludicrous and asinine as that sounds that is precisely why she made that statement.

Later, Secretary Clinton, with the help of several liberal congressmen, went on to attack congress for a failure to fund the state Department with enough funds to provide the proper security in Libya. But the truth is the Military made an offer to augment the Libyan embassy security staff and that offer was rejected by State Department personnel. You know, those folks who were suspended on a Friday and working in another department with the month – BRILLIANT!!

Maybe if the State Department would have saved some money on Secretary Clinton’s travel, or if the Obama Administration had not funded those thoroughbreds like Solyndra, they might have been able to afford the additional security.

Well that is not the end of it, but that is all I am going to write about this evening. I feel like that is enough to ingest this evening. In the future I intend to praise the positive and hammer the negative that occurs in Washington, Austin, and for me, right here in Milam County, Texas.

With All Due Respect…Goodnight!!
Bill

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